Today's Video Link

As I wrote back here, I was disappointed by the stage musical version of Mary Poppins that Disney took to Broadway and elsewhere in the mid-2000's. I thought it lacked heart and magic…and a Mary Poppins with neither of those is not much good, is she? A few great moments came from what they retained from the original movie, though not necessarily from how they staged that material for the stage.

Here we have two numbers from the show performed outta-context for the Royal Variety Performance of 2019. The first, "Feed the Birds," is pretty wonderful I think because (a) it's just the song, arguably the best one in the movie, staged simply and without gimmicks, and (b) The Ol' Bird Lady is played by Petula Clark, who is — as she's been since well before "Downtown" — just a wonderful, magical performer.

The second number is "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and give me some credit for typing that without looking it up or cut-and-pasting. That too is a great song but not, in my opinion, here. It's like they were trying to make it not sound like the version we all know and we (I'm only speaking for some of us) would have preferred to hear it done more like the version we know and love. Different is not always better.

But maybe you'll like what I didn't like or even not like what I did. It's a free country. Why, we're even making the guy who got the most votes President, which we don't always do in America.